Turns out, he has some very interesting and deep reasons for this. Check out an interview Damon did with interviewer, Keith Boykin, below…

Damon Evans on how The Jefferson’s sitcom negatively affected his life…

Damon Evans: If I had to make that particular choice over again, that is accepting or not accepting the role of ‘Lionel’ and replacing actor Michael Evans, I definitely would have refused the role.

… The question asked of me will always be “Which ‘Lionel’ are you, the first or the second?” In retrospect, I think it was actually an impossible task to undertake because most people don’t seem to remember that Michael Evans was the first ‘Jefferson’ to appear on All in the Family. Both Weezy and George were cast later. Also, Sherman Hemsley was not the original George Jefferson.

Damon is referring to this fun fact about the show’s beginning cast: From the character’s first appearance on All in the Family, producer, Norman Lear, had pegged Sherman Hemsley to play “George Jefferson.” But when All in the Family became a hit, Hemsley was tied up on Broadway as the co-star of Purlie, and was understandably reluctant to break his contract. Lear improvised and hired Mel Stewart as a sort of “placeholder.” In the sitcom’s storyline, Stewart posed as “George Jefferson” when he joined “George’s” wife, “Louise” (played by Isabel Sanford), for dinner at the ‘Bunker’ home. It was later revealed that he was actually “Henry Jefferson,” “George’s” brother. 

Damon revealed that his sexual preference became an issue for him on The Jeffersons as well.

KB: Wow. I’m learning a lot today. It sounds like you didn’t enjoy doing the show. Did you?

Damon Evans: Not really. No! I uprooted myself from a role as a classical music student and was thrust in the public’s eye overnight. Talk about stress and adjustment issues. However, that said, the first year on the show was quite a heady experience. There I was a total unknown one day, and the next appearing on network television in one of the top 10 TV shows on the air. I had not even seen one episode of the show before I took over the part, and the producers discouraged me from ever watching any of the episodes in which Mike had appeared. There was such a marked difference in our interpretations of the role.

Losing my anonymity at such a young age was devastating to me. Besides, I was just becoming aware that I was a gay man and the conflict of the expectations of Hollywood and the role of ‘Lionel’ placed me in enormous emotional, psychological, and spiritual conflict with myself. My family, on the other hand, couldn’t have been happier. There I was ‘Lionel’ which was to them the epitome of what they wanted me to be, but ‘Lionel’ was just a role I played as an actor. To this very day, I don’t think they have a clue as to who I really am, and that’s there loss.

KB: You mean they don’t know you’re gay? 

Damon: No, they do know I’m gay but they won’t accept it.

Damon Evans on never meeting the 1st “Lionel.”

Evans also stated that he never had a chance to meet the first Lionel, played by Mike Evans, who was also the co-creator of the “Good Times” sitcom:

Damon Evans: I was the second ‘Lionel’ and I never met Mike, although I did meet his mother one Sunday in church during the first year I was doing the show. That is the closest I ever got to meeting and/or knowing Mike Evans, his mother. I always tell people that I am the one without the ‘fro and the one who married Jenny on TV. Sometimes, that is still not enough for some people to differentiate us apart.

On what advice he would tell others who want to follow in his footsteps and pursue an acting career.

Damon Evans: Don’t forsake their values to their ultimate goal. Because once you get there you’ll find out that there is no there there. And most of all, you don’t have yourself when you get there. Don’t forsake values. … I heard Gladys Knight say this, that we all get lost in the maze of materialism, but there’s a greater force if you believe in it, that brings us back home. Let’s just say this, I’ve taken detours but I always come back home.

Wow! I guess you can say that we all learn something new everyday, don’t we? Damon sure had all of us fooled. We wish that brotha the best though. Maestro cue the outro music! *Singing* “Well we’re moving on up! To the east si-i-ide!…”

[Source]

The post “Lionel” Confessed He Hated Being On “The Jeffersons” But He Sure Had Us Fooled appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

A few of us were at the ILOSM office today, having one of our brainstorm idea sessions, and someone randomly blurted out the name Damon Evans a.k.a. “Lionel” #2 from The Jeffersons. Remember him? (FYI: He is not related to Mike Evans, who played the first “Lionel” on the show). Damon let the cat of the bag when he publicly revealed that he hated playing “Lionel” on The Jeffersons and deeply regrets doing the show.

Turns out, he has some very interesting and deep reasons for this. Check out an interview that Damon did with interviewer, Keith Boykin…

Damon Evans on how The Jefferson’s sitcom negatively affected his life…

Damon Evans: If I had to make that particular choice over again, that is accepting or not accepting the role of ‘Lionel’ and replacing actor Michael Evans, I definitely would have refused the role.

… The question asked of me will always be “Which ‘Lionel’ are you, the first or the second?” In retrospect, I think it was actually an impossible task to undertake because most people don’t seem to remember that Michael Evans was the first ‘Jefferson’ to appear on All in the Family. Both Weezy and George were cast later. Also, Sherman Hemsley was not the original George Jefferson.

Damon is referring to this fun fact about the show’s beginning cast: From the character’s first appearance on All in the Family, producer, Norman Lear, had pegged Sherman Hemsley to play “George Jefferson.” But when All in the Family became a hit, Hemsley was tied up on Broadway as the co-star of Purlie, and was understandably reluctant to break his contract. Lear improvised and hired Mel Stewart as a sort of “placeholder.” In the sitcom’s storyline, Stewart posed as “George Jefferson” when he joined “George’s” wife, “Louise” (played by Isabel Sanford), for dinner at the ‘Bunker’ home. It was later revealed that he was actually “Henry Jefferson,” “George’s” brother. 

Damon revealed that his sexual preference became an issue for him on The Jeffersons as well.

KB: Wow. I’m learning a lot today. It sounds like you didn’t enjoy doing the show. Did you?

Damon Evans: Not really. No! I uprooted myself from a role as a classical music student and was thrust in the public’s eye overnight. Talk about stress and adjustment issues. However, that said, the first year on the show was quite a heady experience. There I was a total unknown one day, and the next appearing on network television in one of the top 10 TV shows on the air. I had not even seen one episode of the show before I took over the part, and the producers discouraged me from ever watching any of the episodes in which Mike had appeared. There was such a marked difference in our interpretations of the role.

Losing my anonymity at such a young age was devastating to me. Besides, I was just becoming aware that I was a gay man and the conflict of the expectations of Hollywood and the role of ‘Lionel’ placed me in enormous emotional, psychological, and spiritual conflict with myself. My family, on the other hand, couldn’t have been happier. There I was ‘Lionel’ which was to them the epitome of what they wanted me to be, but ‘Lionel’ was just a role I played as an actor. To this very day, I don’t think they have a clue as to who I really am, and that’s there loss.

KB: You mean they don’t know you’re gay? 

Damon: No, they do know I’m gay but they won’t accept it.

Damon Evans on never meeting the 1st “Lionel.”

Evans also stated that he never had a chance to meet the first Lionel, played by Mike Evans, who was also the co-creator of the “Good Times” sitcom:

Damon Evans: I was the second ‘Lionel’ and I never met Mike, although I did meet his mother one Sunday in church during the first year I was doing the show. That is the closest I ever got to meeting and/or knowing Mike Evans, his mother. I always tell people that I am the one without the ‘fro and the one who married Jenny on TV. Sometimes, that is still not enough for some people to differentiate us apart.

On what advice he would tell others who want to follow in his footsteps and pursue an acting career.

Damon Evans: Don’t forsake their values to their ultimate goal. Because once you get there you’ll find out that there is no there there. And most of all, you don’t have yourself when you get there. Don’t forsake values. … I heard Gladys Knight say this, that we all get lost in the maze of materialism, but there’s a greater force if you believe in it, that brings us back home. Let’s just say this, I’ve taken detours but I always come back home.

Wow! I guess you can say that we all learn something new everyday, don’t we? Damon sure had all of us fooled. We wish that brotha the best though. Maestro cue the outro music! *Singing* “Well we’re moving on up! To the east si-i-ide!…”

[Source]

The post “Lionel” Confessed He Hated Being On “The Jeffersons” But He Sure Had Us Fooled appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkUim_8g3kb/

His Addictions & Suicide Attempt

As we previously reported, Damon Evans absolutely hated being a part of “The Jeffersons” and had several problems going on behind the scenes and internally (you can read about that HERE). So in 1978, he left the show and decided to pursue other acting roles, as well as his first passion of singing in the opera. Yep, he can SANG.

Unfortunately, in the years that followed, Damon soon realized Hollywood had mostly typecast him as the ‘comedic character,’ “Lionel.” However, he wanted to prove his diversity. This resulted in grueling struggle of unemployment, with very few acting gigs in between.

In a prior People Magazine article, Damon explained how his lack of jobs, led to depression, then to years of drug addiction. “Getting high was all that mattered…I didn’t have any pride,” Evans admitted. Ultimately, his struggles pushed him to a suicide attempt that fortunately went wrong:

Via People: A depressed and unemployed Evans came close to ending his own life. High on crack cocaine and crystal methamphetamine, he walked from his upper Manhattan apartment to the George Washington Bridge and contemplated leaping into the Hudson River 250 feet below. “I thought, ‘I can’t go on like this anymore,’ ” Evans recalls. Luckily a lack of nerve—and one nagging thought—kept his feet on the ground. “I was thinking, ‘How am I going to kill myself when I don’t even know myself?’ ” he says.

Then came the help he needed, but also a very humbling experience:

The next day Damon Evans started getting to know Damon Evans. He admitted his drug addiction to his therapist and joined Narcotics Anonymous. To support himself, he took a job in the mail room of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, where he gamely replied “Yes” whenever coworkers asked, “Weren’t you Lionel?” Evans also joined a church and began taking singing lessons.

It’s great that Damon sought the help he desperately needed, but in the beginning the sudden reality of him having to go from “Lionel” the superstar, back to the everyday civilian, working in the mail room, had to a tough adjustment.

What He Accomplished After Getting Clean

Today Damon Evans is 69 years young and has made great strides in his life. In 2007 (at age 56) he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Bronx College in New York. He explained to NPR, why he decided to go to college at an older age:

Damon Evans- “I am useless when I am not active. And to be quite honest, I didn’t have a direction when I went there. I just sort of just said well, let me just see where this goes. I started loving it, I mean, started knowing that I could even write.

And things start evolving and I started tutoring. It’s really been pretty phenomenal. It really was the verbal autobiography that brought this attention to the fact of what I’ve done and I – and for… I talked to the students about what it meant about learning to let go of family, about, you know, following your own course in life, and about confronting the fear of change. And I think, for me, that was the hardest thing – was that I was so afraid to give up my identity as a performer. And you know – but gradually it happened, and of course, there’s this whole new world in life. I was afraid of change.”

Source1, Source2

The post “The Jeffersons” Lionel Reveals Drug Battle, Suicide Attempt & His Regular Job After Fame appeared first on I Love Old School Music.

A few of us were at the ILOSM office today, having one of our brainstorm idea sessions, and someone randomly blurted out the name Damon Evans a.k.a. “Lionel” #2 from The Jeffersons. Remember him? (FYI: He is not related to Mike Evans, who played the first “Lionel” on the show). Damon let the cat of the bag when he publicly revealed that he hated playing “Lionel” on The Jeffersons and deeply regrets doing the show.

Turns out, he has some very interesting and deep reasons for this. Check out an interview that Damon did with blogger, Keith Boykin:

Interviewer: How did the experience on [The Jeffersons] affect your life?

Damon Evans: If I had to make that particular choice over again, that is accepting or not accepting the role of ‘Lionel’ and replacing actor Michael Evans, I definitely would have refused the role.

… The question asked of me will always be “Which ‘Lionel’ are you, the first or the second?” In retrospect, I think it was actually an impossible task to undertake because most people don’t seem to remember that Michael Evans was the first ‘Jefferson’ to appear on All in the Family. Both Weezy and George were cast later. Also, Sherman Hemsley was not the original George Jefferson.

Damon is referring to this fun fact about the show’s beginning cast: From the character’s first appearance on All in the Family, producer, Norman Lear, had pegged Sherman Hemsley to play “George Jefferson.” But when All in the Family became a hit, Hemsley was tied up on Broadway as the co-star of Purlie, and was understandably reluctant to break his contract. Lear improvised and hired Mel Stewart as a sort of “placeholder.” In the sitcom’s storyline, Stewart posed as “George Jefferson” when he joined “George’s” wife, “Louise” (played by Isabel Sanford), for dinner at the ‘Bunker’ home. It was later revealed that he was actually “Henry Jefferson,” “George’s” brother. 

Then Damon Evans revealed that his sexual preference became an issue for him on The Jeffersons as well.

Interviewer: Wow. I’m learning a lot today. It sounds like you didn’t enjoy doing the show. Did you?

Damon Evans: Not really. No! I uprooted myself from a role as a classical music student and was thrust in the public’s eye overnight. Talk about stress and adjustment issues. However, that said, the first year on the show was quite a heady experience. There I was a total unknown one day, and the next appearing on network television in one of the top 10 TV shows on the air. I had not even seen one episode of the show before I took over the part, and the producers discouraged me from ever watching any of the episodes in which Mike had appeared. There was such a marked difference in our interpretations of the role.

Losing my anonymity at such a young age was devastating to me. Besides, I was just becoming aware that I was a gay man and the conflict of the expectations of Hollywood and the role of ‘Lionel’ placed me in enormous emotional, psychological, and spiritual conflict with myself. My family, on the other hand, couldn’t have been happier. There I was ‘Lionel’ which was to them the epitome of what they wanted me to be, but ‘Lionel’ was just a role I played as an actor. To this very day, I don’t think they have a clue as to who I really am, and that’s there loss.

Interviewer: You mean they don’t know you’re gay? 

Damon Evans: No, they do know I’m gay but they won’t accept it.

Evans also stated that he never had a chance to meet the first Lionel, played by Mike Evans, who was also the co-creator of the “Good Times” sitcom.

Damon Evans: I was the second ‘Lionel’ and I never met Mike, although I did meet his mother one Sunday in church during the first year I was doing the show. That is the closest I ever got to meeting and/or knowing Mike Evans, his mother. I always tell people that I am the one without the ‘fro and the one who married Jenny on TV. Sometimes, that is still not enough for some people to differentiate us apart.

On what advice he would tell others who want to follow in his footsteps and pursue an acting career…

Damon Evans: Don’t forsake their values to their ultimate goal. Because once you get there you’ll find out that there is no there there. And most of all, you don’t have yourself when you get there. Don’t forsake values. … I heard Gladys Knight say this, that we all get lost in the maze of materialism, but there’s a greater force if you believe in it, that brings us back home. Let’s just say this, I’ve taken detours but I always come back home.

Wow! I guess you can say that we all learn something new everyday, don’t we? Damon sure had all of us fooled. We wish that brotha the best though. Maestro cue the outro music! *Singing* “Well we’re moving on up! To the east si-i-ide!…”

[Source]

The post Wow! “Lionel” Said He HATED Being On “The Jeffersons”?!! appeared first on I Love Old School Music.